The first oil well in North American is drilled.

The first oil well in North American is drilled in Lambton County, Ontario, in 1857/58. Although the oil field here is relatively small and nearly exhausted after a few years of production, it marks the beginning of Canada’s oil industry. The region, particularly around Sarnia, continues to be a major centre for petrochemical research and refinery operations.Source: Glenbow Archives, NA-302-9

Oil seeps in southern Alberta are documented.

George Mercer Dawson conducts numerous surveys of western Canada and its resources for the International Boundary Commission (1873-1874) and the Geological Survey of Canada (1875-1901). In 1874, he reports oil seeps in the Waterton area, 225 km (140 mi.) south of Calgary.Source: Glenbow Archives, NA-302-7

The first producing oil well in Western Canada is drilled.

In 1902, the Rocky Mountain Development Company drills a well on Cameron Creek (in what is now Waterton Lakes National Park). It is the first producing oil well in western Canada. Source: Glenbow Archives, NA-1585-7

Petroleum is found in Alberta’s Turner Valley.

On May 14, 1914, the Dingman No. 1 well strikes wet gas in the Devonian reef formation deep under the surface of Turner Valley, Alberta. Other wells are soon drilled, and the Turner Valley field becomes Canada’s largest oil and gas producer. Source: Provincial Archives of Alberta, P1304

A new discovery rekindles hope that large reservoirs of oil will be found beneath Alberta.

Discovered by British Petroleum in 1923, the large Wainwright oil field revives hopes for the Alberta oil industry.Source: Provincial Archives of Alberta, A10793

Control of natural resources is transferred to the provincial government.

The agreement transferring jurisdiction of natural resources from the federal to the provincial government is signed in Ottawa, December 14, 1929, and enacted the following year. (Seated, starting second from left, are Hon. Charles Stewart, Minister of the Interior and Mines; Rt. Hon. W. L. Mackenzie King, Prime Minster of Canada; and Hon. John Brownlee, Premier of Alberta.) The transfer allows Alberta to realize the full economic potential of the oil and gas resources found within its borders. Source: Provincial Archives of Alberta, A1092

The Oil Column phase of Turner Valley development begins.

The Royalties No. 1 oil discovery, in the Mississippian geological structure under Turner Valley, sets off another oil boom for the region. Source: Glenbow Archives, NA-2335-2

Leduc No. 1 sets off the modern oil sector in Alberta.

Imperial Leduc No. 1 blows in, setting off the modern oil sector in Alberta. The discovery of the Leduc oil field, then the largest and most lucrative yet found, comes after decades of fruitless searching and drilling. It marks the beginning of Alberta’s modern oil industry and completely revolutionizes the province’s economy and prospects. Source: Provincial Archives of Alberta, P1342

Additional oil discoveries confirm Alberta as a major oil producer.

Oil derricks dot the landscape, and smoke from a new oil well rises from the horizon beyond the hamlet of Redwater. On the heels of the Leduc discovery, Imperial Oil finds a second major oil field near Redwater, northeast of Edmonton. Larger and easier to access than Leduc, this discovery confirms Alberta’s future as a major oil producer. Source: Provincial Archives of Alberta, A9763

The Interprovincial Pipeline expands the market for Alberta’s oil.

Completed between Edmonton, Alberta, and Superior, Wisconsin, in 1950, the Interprovincial Pipeline is a vital transportation link that makes Alberta’s oilfields financially viable. By 1956, the pipeline is expanded and extended to Sarnia, Ontario, and is transporting more than 200,000 barrels a day. Source: Julian Biggs/National Film Board of Canada/Library and Archives Canada/PA-122742

“Fracking” opens up previously inaccessible oil reservoirs.

A wellsite geologist stands in front of the Pembina No. 1 oil well. A joint venture of two oil companies, this well successfully strikes oil about 100 km (62 mi.) southwest of Edmonton. The oil at Pembina is accessed by a developing technology called sandstone fracturing or “fracking.” This technology makes it possible to extract previously inaccessible oil reserves and becomes more widely used throughout Alberta in the following decades.Source: Glenbow Archives, NA-5103-9

Oil is discovered in Alberta’s remote northwest.

In 1965, the Banff Oil Company drills successful wells in this region. They are the first major oil discoveries in this remote area of Alberta’s northwest. Source: Glenbow Archives, S-236-46

The OPEC oil embargo rocks energy markets.

Starting in 1973, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) begins restricting oil exports to much of the Western world, including Canada. Fuel shortages become common, and the price of Alberta oil, one of the few remaining reliable and friendly sources of oil for industrialized nations, skyrockets. Source: Library of Congress, LC-U9-37734-16A

West Pembina injects new life into Alberta’s oil sector.

In October 1977, Chevron Oil opens the West Pembina oil field. It is the largest discovery in ten years and revives hopes for Alberta’s oil sector, which had been suffering from a lack of new discoveries over the previous decade. Source: WikiCommons/Qyd

The NEP alienates Alberta’s oil patch.

The National Energy Program is created by the federal government in 1980 to ensure a reliable and affordable supply of oil and gas for Canadian industry. The provincial government perceives it as an unwarranted intrusion into its affairs and as sacrificing Alberta’s interests in favour of those of Central Canada. Although a compromise is reached in 1981, bitter memories of the NEP continue to characterize Alberta-Central Canada relations. Source: CP Photo/Dave Bunston, 03263367

The Western Accord brings NEP regulation to an end.

Within a year of this meeting, the Governments of Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan will negotiate the Western Accord, which ends the National Energy Program, deregulates oil prices and encourages new investment in western Canada’s oil sector. Source: CP Photo/Pat Price, 673836

Environmental concerns challenge the practices of the petroleum industry

Images such as these feed concerns through the Western world about environmental damage due to industrial development. In 1987, the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development releases the report Our Common Future. It encourages the concept of “sustainable development” in an attempt to balance First World concerns about human rights and environmental degradation with Third World nations’ need for economic development. Although not directly related to the oil sector, this concept forms the basis for future anti-pollution and climate change strategies. Source: Glenbow Archives, NA-2864-20312

The World Petroleum Congress meets in Calgary.

The World Petroleum Congress, held for the first time in Canada, attracts industry and political leaders from around the world. A parallel counter-congress and protests occur in the city at the same time. As the new millennium approaches, Alberta’s oil sector faces pressure from increasingly dedicated and organized environmental and human rights activists. Source: CP Photo/Adrian Wyld

The oil sands dominate oil production in Alberta.

In 2002, conventional oil production in Alberta is surpassed by oil sands production for the first time - a sign of the changing focus of Alberta’s oil sector. Source: Provincial Archives of Alberta, GR1989.0516.394#3

Women in the Oil Patch, Beginnings to 1946

From the 1880s to the 1940s, the oil sector was almost exclusively a male pursuit. Women were limited mostly to social functions—smashing the symbolic bottle of champagne at a new well site and hosting tours and parties for company officials and potential investors. In the 1910s and 1920s, there were a few women in clerical roles for oil company executives and at the head offices and refinery operations. By the 1940s, Imperial Oil was hiring women as surveyors in Alberta and as researchers in its laboratories.

The most common role for women was not the glamorous role of party hostess or the scientific role of a trained professional. It was, rather, the very unglamorous and unheralded, but practical and necessary, role of domestic housewife, family supporter and community anchor. Life in oil field camps and communities was a rough existence, made easier for many married drillers, supervisors and managers by the stability provided by their wives.

Dorothy Manning, the seventeen-year old wife of a toolpush at Turner Valley, recalled arriving at Longview in 1937:

My husband, Joe Manning, and I were married the 25th of December and we left for Longview on the 26th. We had fifty cents when we landed in Longview I walked into a shack and I didn’t know what to do. There wasn’t much room to put anything but in the top drawer of the dresser, I found a four

pound jam pail, a pail of peanut butter, a pound of butter and a loaf of bread. That was all there was and we were going to have to exist on this for weeks We had no chairs. We had four apple boxes to sit on and a home-made table. We had four orange crates, pounded to the wall. This was in 1937 and I thought, “What have I got myself into?” But time went by and we never starved. We didn’t owe anybody.

Similarly, Helen Kirkpatrick, wife of a driller with Imperial Oil, recalls frequent moves as her husband went from well to well around the province.

We moved to Mannville in February or March in 1946. The weather was very, very cold. We moved into an old army hut that George brought in for us to live in. It was one long room. We had very little furniture - a couple of beds, a table and chairs and a stove, very little more than that. We hung our coats and clothes on nails on the wall and

put our other things in suitcases and a large cardboard box. There wasn’t a bathroom, we went out to an outhouse. The snow sifted in from the ceiling all around us. It was awful. It was terrible, [but in retrospect] it was an exciting way to live and I didn’t come from a rich family so I wasn’t missing anything.

The experience of many oil-field wives in small shacks or huts in a shanty town or camp was often a challenging existence.